Is there a male menopause? As a man in his mid-50s, I have recently become aware of getting older. Increasing age has had a curious effect on my psyche. I am noticing, on an almost daily basis, that I am thinking, feeling and behaving in ways that are starkly different from my youth and earlier adulthood. I will share these experiences on this blog and hope others will join me in describing their own age-related quirks and oddities. I can't be the only one at this "funny age", can I??

Saturday, 23 March 2013

Tito, my Dalmatian dog, had been agitating for his walk. It
was a frozen February afternoon and the roads and pavements were encrusted with
ice, the previous week’s snow compressed by foot-fall into an undulating glacier.

A sane option would have been to limit the walk to the end
of the road, a five minute jaunt on a flat, non-hazardous track. But no, my dog
had abundant energy and my boots had rugged soles so I opted for the usual
two-mile circuit. The inevitable happened on a downward slope by the nearby
woods. The fall was spectacular; my front foot sped out from under me, my other
foot (in trying to compensate) followed suit, propelling me into the air where
I seemed to hover parallel to the ground before crash-landing on my back with a
sickening thud.

Despite the acute pain radiating from my arse, my foremost anxiety
was whether my plummet had been witnessed. As I gingerly lifted myself into a
sitting position my humiliation was confirmed, a party of four adults and twice
as many children were walking up the slope towards me, concern etched on their
faces. I raised my hand to signal I was unharmed. At this moment 70 pounds of excitable
Dalmatian leaped over my shoulders, his dangly bits coming to rest against the
nape of my neck. Temporally marooned in this straddle position, Tito panicked
and instinctively humped the back of my head as if I was a bitch on heat.

I still wonder how those parents explained Tito’s behavior to their offspring.

Saturday, 9 March 2013

My wife is not a vindictive
woman. Well, not usually. But a recent purchase of a toilet-seat allowed Mrs
Jones to take retribution for 30 years of frustration.

Throughout our time together she
has asked me to put the toilet seat down after I've had a pee. Although I
suspect that millions of women across the planet urge their men to perform this
simple act, I’ve never been able to understand why. After all, I’m thoughtful
enough to always lift the seat before peeing so as to avoid splashes that would
condemn Mrs Jones to a wet butt when she uses the loo. So why am I expected to
put it down again when I’ve finished? Is it something to do with aesthetics,
the bathroom being more pleasing on the eye for future visitors? Or is it
because they feel contaminated if they have to touch the toilet seat prior to
squatting? The underlying motivation behind her insistence on this piece of
lavatory etiquette remains a mystery to me, like multiple other aspects of the
female psyche.

After my three decades of
non-compliance Mrs Jones has hit back. Last month she bought a new, black-and-white
cowhide patterned toilet-seat for our downstairs loo. As I am to D.I.Y. what North
Korea is to nuclear disarmament, my wife does all the practical jobs around the
house. So, true to form, Mrs Jones fitted the toilet-seat. But an additional tweak
of the screwdriver or a calculating twist of the pliers rendered the seat
incapable of remaining upright; lift the seat into the vertical position and it
totters, like a neurotic on the edge of a high-diving board, before crashing
down with a dull thud.

A toilet seat that refuses to
stay up presents a conundrum to the peeing male. What approach can be used to
channel the stream of urine into the bowl? When faced with this frustration my
initial intention was to just piss all over the seat to punish Mrs Jones for
her sloppy joinery. But then my self-preservation instinct kicked-in and I
quashed that idea.

So what options remained in my
attempt to pee through the contracted hole of a seat-down toilet? Well, I could
have sat down to urinate like a girlie, the equivalent of Mrs Jones having castrated
me, but that would have been conceding defeat. So I tried holding the seat up
with my right hand while directing the hose-pipe with my left only to discover
that the complex maneuvres of finding, releasing and aiming were too much to execute
single-handed, particular when wearing tight underpants devoid of a fly-hole and
requiring one to hold down the elasticated waist-band – males will understand
the considerable dexterity required to achieve this mission without pissing
down your trouser leg.

Creativity was required to overcome
this challenge. Next I straddled the toilet bowl, one foot at either side, bent
my knees and pushed my willy downwards into a perpendicular position as if
operating a pneumatic drill on roadside concrete. Although not the most
edifying sight for casual onlookers, this macho straddle-pose seemed to have
solved the problem; that is until my knee-ligaments began to give way.

But then success! Seven days of
practice at leaning forward without putting my hands on the toilet-cistern,
thereby freeing them up for todger-management, enabled me to consistently hit
the target while maintaining my masculinity. Picture the Winter Olympics 2010
in Vancouver, and the poise of the ski-jumper in mid-flight, tilting at
an angle of 45 degrees, and you will replicate the image of me doing what comes naturally in our
downstairs toilet in Lancashire, England.

I am participating in
the Dude Write Starting Lineup this week
where you can find some excellent posts by bloggers who happen to be
dudes: http://dudewrite.blogspot.com)